The common container in the market for containing the fluid drink (such as the water, fruit juice, carbonated beverage, and alcoholic beverage), e.g. the PET bottle, glass bottle or vacuum flask, is provided with an opening or an outlet tube for serving as a flow passage for the fluid drink to be poured out therethrough. Usually, the mouth of the container is closed by a cap or a faucet, but the conventional cap is mounted to the container mouth by means of a threading engagement. Although better closing can be realized thereby, the threading engagement demands both hands at the same time for smoothing the opening/closing operation. Thus, for a user who cannot spare both of his hands when riding a bicycle, driving a car, or carrying an object, it often makes lots of inconvenience.
In addition, a faucet always serves as the control device for a discharge opening of a flow passage. A conventional faucet is structured so that an external handle is operable to drive a water block member or a ball valve contained inside the faucet and to control discharge of the flow thereby. However, the conventional faucet has numerous components/parts, and the assembling thereof is too complicated so that it is not suitable for use in the opening of the aforementioned container. This inevitably results in a waste of source.
In view of the aforementioned disadvantages, the inventor of the present invention has proposed a design of “flow control device” in the U.S. Pat. No. 7,988,013 to solve those problems. As illustrated in FIG. 8, the flow control device mainly includes a hood 10, a ball valve 20, a sealing ring 30, and a handle 40. The hood 10 has a discharge opening 12 thereon, and is fixed to the mouth of the bottle via the thread. The ball valve 20 has a flow passage 21, and is movably mounted in the internal receiving space 14 of the hood 10 and braked by a sealing ring 12 so that the ball valve 20 and the handle 40, which is located outside of the hood 10, are coupled together and thus movable in unison with each other. As a result, the user can control the rotation of the ball valve 20 by operating the handle 40 to switch the communication state between the flow passage 21 and the discharge opening so that the function of controlling the discharge state is achieved.
Although the aforementioned flow control device in the U.S. Pat. No. 7,988,013 can effectively solve the disadvantages of the conventional caps, it still has the disadvantages of failing to prevent the discharge opening from being contaminated by the dirt and not easy for a user to drink directly with his mouth. Therefore, the inventor of the present invention proposes an improved flow control device that is more pollution-proof and more convenient for the user to drink directly with his mouth so as to meet the user's requirements.